Katie Holmes

Adam Sandler Sticks to Formula in ‘Jack and Jill’

PatrickMcD — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 08:37:39 -0500

Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – No one will ever accuse Adam Sandler of not knowing his audience and the reason they keep coming back to his “Happy Madison” genre of films – he delivers the oddball characters, lots of bodily fluids/sounds, physical beatings and the know-it-all straight man. Add the gooey sentiment and out spews the latest, “Jack and Jill.”

There are ardent admirers of the Sandler style, his films are huge successes. Someday he will go to the well once too often, or will get too old to get a shot in the groin, but for now “Jack and Jill” is going up the box office hill. Sandler also has crossed into the movie comic’s go-to character, a dual role as a woman (in drag). There is no nuance as he plays the twins named Jack and Jill, but nobody goes to an Adam Sandler film for subtlety.

Sandler is Jack Sadelstein, a high level (and rich) partner at a Los Angeles advertising firm. With Thanksgiving coming up, he makes his holiday plans, which includes hosting his twin sister from the Bronx, Jill (Sandler, again). There is a wrench in these plans in the form of Dunkin Donuts, one of Jack’s biggest clients. It seems they want to have Al Pacino (playing himself) as the spokesperson for their new “Dunkaccino” (product placement) and Jack is not sure he can make it happen.

It’s Funny Because She Can’t Mow: Adam Sandler as Jill and Eugenio Derbez as Felipe in ‘Jack and Jill’
Photo credit: Columbia Pictures

When Jill arrives on Thanksgiving, she is an obnoxious lout (surprise!), and excretes many bodily fluids. She also is depressed without a man, and wants to extend her stay to find one. Through a set of circumstances that involves Johnny Depp, Al Pacino develops a crush on her. Pacino tells Jack if he can deliver Jill, he will do the ad for Dunkin Donuts. Regrettably, Jill is also pursued by Jack’s gardener, Felipe (Eugenio Derbez), and this puts everything into a quandary. Hopefully a shot in the groin or Adam Sandler acting desperately inappropriate as Jack or Jill will lift all boats in this situation.

There are funny bits in “Jack and Jill,” it’s impossible to miss with the whole film. But the emphasis is on the word “bits,” because that is where the laughs originate – in tiny, tiny little bits. This simply repeats the formula of previous Sandler films, and any kind of “character” for Jill is lost in her in the role of scapegoat for all the stupid gags. Jill acts like a mental patient, yet everyone loves her. Even Sandler’s goofy vocal effects sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. Literally, screenwriter Steve Koren uses Jill like a rodeo clown or a fart in an elevator, as unseemly a presence as possible.

Al Pacino is fascinating in his role as “Al Pacino.” There must have been several zeroes on that fat paycheck he received, because he was game for almost any type of Sandler-esque frivolity. Maybe his kids, or in his case grandkids, wanted him to do it. Regardless, he sweats like a racehorse going through the mechanics of being Sandler-ized, but also delivers some truly strange stuff, including improper cellphone use and recitation of some old lines from “The Godfather.” There is a point in the film where he wants to destroy a performance that is captured on DVD. He might want to consider taking the same action with this film.

There are Sandler’s stock characters and friends making cameos or quick roles. He convinced Depp, Drew Carey, Norm MacDonald, John McEnroe, Christie Brinkley and Subway’s Jared Fogle to briefly appear. Old SNL pal Tim Meadows plays his ad partner, David Spade truly has a potential career-killing role and oddly Katie Holmes portrays Jack’s wife Erin. Eugenio Derbez adds the stereo in stereotype as the Hispanic gardener, but again the role is so oddball it actually works a bit. There’s that word again, “bit.”

Hoo-Ha?: Al Pacino and Adam Sandler in ‘Jack and Jill’
Photo credit: Columbia Pictures

Jack and Jill are supposedly twins, and the film even adds testimonials from real twins, but for the most part the connection is never explored. Jill is a prop, given all the heavy lifting of the obnoxious Sandler persona, and besides using the twin element for a stupid secret language and the gooey sentimentalism toward the end, the production might as well had not bothered making them twins.

What makes us laugh is the fingerprint of our perspective, different for everyone. Adam Sandler has struck a nerve in the funny bones of so many filmgoers over the years, and his filmography is so heavily viewed again and again, it’s defies logic to call his films childish, freaky, stupid and unfunny. But I will.

“Jack and Jill” opens everywhere on November 11th. Featuring Adam Sandler, Al Pacino, Tim Meadows, Nick Swardson, Drew Carey, Johnny Depp, Eugenio Derbez and Katie Holmes. Screenplay by Steve Koren, story by Ben Zook. Directed by Dennis Dugan. Rated “PG”

By PATRICK McDONALD
Senior Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
pat@hollywoodchicago.com

Channing Tatum Stars in Inconsistent ‘The Son of No One’

BrianTT — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:52:56 -0400

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Director Dito Montiel and star Channing Tatum were once tagged with the label of the hot new debut artistic partnership. 2006’s great “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints” introduced both men to the world and it felt like it could be the calling card for a creative team to someday rival Scorsese and De Niro. Tatum reunited with Montiel on the disappointing “Fighting” and their latest venture, “The Son of No One,” while an improvement on Montiel’s sophomore slump, is nonetheless another misfire.

Of course, many readers will recognize Tatum from his more mainstream fare like “The Dilemma” and “G.I. Joe,” but he had such a instant screen presence in “Saints” that I always hoped he’d find his way to more gritty indie fare like “The Son of No One,” based on Montiel’s book. This is a challenging piece, a drama about hidden pasts and the changing face of an increasingly-dark New York City in the year after 9/11, and it’s the kind of piece that I would wager works significantly better on the page than it does on the screen. It’s the kind of role that I’d like to see Tatum take more often and he does nothing wrong here. In fact, he gives a more challenging, deep performance than he has in some time, clearly being invigorated by working with Montiel again. But the rest of the movie, especially the script and direction by Tatum’s friend, makes the actor’s quality work hard to see.

The Son of No One
Photo credit: Anchor Bay

The biggest problem with “The Son of No One” is a borderline-incoherent flashback structure. The film is constantly bouncing back and forth between 2002 and 1986 in a manner that never allows either time period to gel into something interesting. Montiel would have been wiser to trim the flashbacks or tell the story chronologically but the constant interchange between the two leads to a lack of rhythm and pace, two essential ingredients in a film like this one. This is a dark story in which we need to care about the characters and the way Montiel wrote and edited it makes that difficult to do. It’s messy when it needs to be engaging; choppy when it needs to draw us in.

Police Officer Jonathan White (Tatum) has been assigned to a rough new district but one that he knows all too well. When he was a kid (over-played by Jake Cherry), he lived in this bad neighborhood and he shot a man who was threatening his life. The police, including the former partner of the young White’s father, Detective Charles Stanford (Al Pacino), swept it under the rug, figuring the dead man wasn’t worth much anyway and that it might help to have a kid on the inside of the projects to help them out. Not long after, another scumbag ends up dead in a similarly justifiable, accidental manner. Sixteen years later, a reporter (Juliette Binoche) is investigating the unsolved crimes and threatens to upend White’s life. Ray Liotta plays his new Captain, James Ransome his partner, Katie Holmes his wife, and Tracy Morgan his childhood friend, one of the few people who knows the truth about what happened to the boy nicknamed “Milk.”

The Son of No One
Photo credit: Anchor Bay

There are scenes in “The Son of No One” that work. Liotta and Pacino are always effective in police officer roles (even if the parts too easily allow them to give performances that aren’t exactly challenging) and the film is constantly threatening to find a groove whenever Tatum has a strong partner with which to work (like Liotta or Binoche). When he doesn’t, or whenever the film is in flashback, it simply sags. The cast isn’t helped out by poor production decisions on Montiel’s part including an over-used and awkward score by Jonathan Elias & David Wittman and shaky, inconsistent cinematography by Benoit Delhomme. Even the editing seems off.

But the major flaws of “The Son of No One” come back to the ineffective script, forever damaged by a finale shootout that is simply ridiculous. More crucially, WAY too much time is spent with the young Mr. White, as Montiel forgets that it’s far more interesting to see how the adult version of this justifiable killer is coming to terms with his past rather than just watching the details of it, even if that does mean cutting some of Mr. Pacino’s monologues. 2002 scenes like the one in which Tatum goes home again to discover that the kid who helped protect him has become a seriously-damaged adult or the flashes of recognition on his face as he realizes his new secrets are rising to the surface work. There are moments in “The Son of No One” with power, performances with strength, but none of the moments are connected in an effective manner. If it was 2006 again, one might be tempted to say that the work shows promise for young Mr. Tatum and his friend director if they could just refine their skills. But you can only be the “hot new thing” once. Let’s hope the fourth time’s the charm.

“The Son of No One” stars Channing Tatum, Ray Liotta, Katie Holmes, Al Pacino, Juliette Binoche, Jake Cherry, and Tracy Morgan. It was written and directed by Dito Montiel. It opens in limited release, including in the Chicago area, on November 4th, 2011 and is rated R.

By BRIAN TALLERICO
Content Director
HollywoodChicago.com
brian@hollywoodchicago.com

Ineffective ‘Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’ From Producer Guillermo Del Toro

BrianTT — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 10:03:11 -0400

Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Echoing elements of masterful works by Producer Guillermo Del Toro (most notably “The Devil’s Backbone,” “Pan’s Labyrinth”), “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” is an incredibly frustrating remake, a film that reminds one of scary movies instead of actually producing scares itself. There are gothic elements that work, but the story simply isn’t strong enough to support a remake and lackluster direction fails to iron out the flaws in this potential horror hit.

Most haunted house films suffer from a common flaw – why the Hell won’t they just leave the house? “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” may be the most egregious offender of this regular problem ever. The film is constantly shattering suspension of disbelief, which prevents it from ever becoming honestly scary. When everyone in the audience would merely turn and run from the fictional situation at hand, it stops the fictional fear cold. “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” is a story about a child being tormented by violent creatures. After increasingly terrifying attacks, the idea that she would spend another minute (much less actually SLEEP) in the house where these creatures live is just too much to take. “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” is illogical on every level and that lack of logic also leads to a lack of honest scares.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark
Photo credit: Miramax Films

Much like “Pan’s,” “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” is another tale of a young girl arriving at a history-filled estate with a stepparent to add to the drama inherent in something new. The best elements of Del Toro and Matthew Robbins’ screenplay play off classic fairy tale elements – the creatures under the bed, the evil stepmother, the haunted house. These elements are woven around the story of a smart, precocious girl (Bailee Madison), her often-preoccupied father (Guy Pearce), and her new stepmother (Katie Holmes). The trio moves into an old estate with the intention of renovating it for the cover of Architectural Digest.

Of course, it’s not long before our heroine is exploring the previously-sealed basement and hearing the whispering voices of something asking her to come and play. Rather than run fleeing, the lonely girl investigates and sets free dozens of ugly little beasts who proceed to terrorize her. Del Toro and Robbins develop a somewhat-nifty mythology around these creatures (that stepmom has to leave the house to learn at the most inopportune time) as they are part Tooth Fairy, part Gremlin, and part demon. They want your children’s teeth but they can’t come into the light. A Polaroid camera serves as a nifty weapon in the final act.

Sorta. Debut director Troy Nixey doesn’t have the eye for a challenging piece like “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.” When the Polaroid is introduced, savvy viewers naturally assume that it will lead to at least one strong visual – a creature of the darkness caught in the flash of the bulb. It does happen on a plot level but isn’t accompanied by a scary, memorable visual. In fact, the piece is almost entirely devoid of memorable visuals save for perhaps a few shadows rising up shower curtains in a scene so traumatic that the fact that the rest of the film doesn’t consist of the poor terrorized girl merely screaming and crying is purely ridiculous. Horror needs to work as visual storytelling and “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” isn’t visually memorable.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark
Photo credit: Miramax Films

And it isn’t thematically intriguing either. To be blunt, I was never invested in these characters to the point where I was overly concerned what happened to them. Their behavior feels so scripted at every turn that they are nothing more than devices – they are as real as the creatures who crawl from the Earth to steal their teeth.

To be fair, Pearce and Holmes find some nice moments – typically the ones away from the horror arc of the film. The story of a younger stepmother trying to get closer to her hesitant stepdaughter is actually more interesting than the horror one. When mom’s dress is found in tatters (one assumes the creatures were bored waiting for their prey to go to bed and needed something to do), the ensuing scenes of domestic turmoil are far more interesting than the action of the piece. Pearce is one of our best working actors and Holmes has long been underrated. One hopes she finds a part to prove that again soon.

Ultimately, “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” is far from a disaster. Del Toro is too talented a filmmaker even when he’s not directing to let the work fall completely on its face. And, oddly, it feels like a love letter to the original, a widely-berated TV movie that Del Toro has claimed helped spawn his love for horror. The remake is unlikely to do the same for future generations of filmmakers.

“Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” stars Bailee Madison, Katie Holmes, and Guy Pearce. It was written by Guillermo Del Toro and Matthew Robbins and directed by Troy Nixey. It opens nationwide on August 26th, 2011.

By BRIAN TALLERICO
Content Director
HollywoodChicago.com
brian@hollywoodchicago.com

Kevin Kline, John C. Reilly Are Eccentric New Yorkers in ‘The Extra Man’

PatrickMcD — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 09:08:56 -0400

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – The beauty of watching creative character actors like Kevin Kline and John C. Reilly is that they seem to revel in the craft of embodying their roles. In “The Extra Man,” they both take a trippy and literate script and apply some additional magic that helps to flesh out a young man’s journey into the heart of Manhattan.

Louis Ives (Paul Dano) is a twentysomething man who doesn’t quite fit in this particular modern era (he channels a 1920s ethos). As a moony literature professor at a private boarding school, he secretly lusts after his female high school age students and displays a certain pan sexual quirk that to date has gone unfulfilled. After he is laid off from his teaching position, he takes a leap of faith and finally heads to his dream world of New York City, to be a real working writer and man about town.

As fate would have it, he finds a room on the upper west side of the city, with a strange man whose inquiries are instinctively passive aggressive. He is Henry Harrison (Kevin Kline), an eccentric on the upside of age sixty, continuing a peculiar city adventure by offering himself as an “extra man.” He escorts rich widows to swanky society events, and partakes in the finer amenities without having to pay. Young Louis is intrigued by this, and longs for older mentor to introduce him into the extra man realm, which Henry does reluctantly and with a great deal of foppish complaining.

Just Some Gigolos: Louis Ives (Paul Dano) and Henry Harrison (Kevin Kline) in ‘The Extra Man’
Photo Credit: © Magnolia Pictures

After securing a job at an environmental magazine, Louis starts to explore the side of himself that Manhattan can easily provide. So while acclimating to his new job, attempting to connect to Henry and falling for an attractive co-worker (Katie Holmes), Louis allows himself to completely be the “man” that has been percolating inside his whole life. The consequences of that expression has implications for every person and circumstance involved, including a silent neighbor named Gershon (John C. Reilly).

This film clings tenaciously to itself, barely holding up its flimsy and derivative premise. The actors save it with their sincerity, and actually overcome some very questionable narrative motivations by going with the flow. And although on the surface it may seem that the characters are over-the-top, the deeper the actors were willing to go, the higher they flew. It gave some background players like Celia Weston, Marian Seldes and Dan Hedaya an opportunity to flex some character muscle.

Paul Dano also played something a little beyond his soft persona. He was asked to do a lot of the heavy lifting in the narrative, and his approach was consistent throughout. His namby-pamby nature and indecisiveness was somewhat annoying, but that was the point, and it did mirror a real life sensibility, where nothing is cut and dried. He created small victories, and that is enough for the journey he experiences.

John C. Reilly has a small but significant role, and after seeing him this summer in this film and “Cyrus,” his range as an actor is becoming more impressive. He is an imposing, mysterious figure in The Extra Man, a bicycle riding mountain man (he grew his hair and beard to extraordinary length) whose presence is silent for half of the film. When he finally speaks it is a marvelous surprise, and he then turns his character around from imposing to sympathetic.

Kevin Kline is a notable king of comedy, his turn in “A Fish Called Wanda” will resonate through the ages. His portrayal of Henry Harrison is a tad on the hambone side, but again that may be the point. The screenplay, by Robert Pulcini, Jonathan Ames and Shari Springer Berman, fusses with Kline’s character the most. Is he brain damaged? A monster? A misunderstood genius? Like a weathervane, Kline has to point in all these directions and it is distracting, although it is always a pleasure to see him working.

The direction (by Pulcini and Berman) is choppy and haphazard, and the ending left a little to be desired – it felt like it had been changed – but it is the acting and the characters that make this small little art film a worthy contender for a number of Independent Spirit Awards. It is fun to watch them, even Katie Holmes, because you can tell they believe in what they’re doing.

And like the ladies who are escorted by the extra men, the audience is taken out for a nice little character driven experience, different from the 3D, animated, blow-up-the-world country fare of summer. Nothing wrong with that.

“The Extra Man” continues its limited release in Chicago on August 13th. See local listings for theaters and show times. Featuring Kevin Kline, John C. Reilly, Paul Dano, Katie Holmes, Cathy Moriarty, Celia Weston, Patti D’Arbanville, Marian Seldes and Dan Hedaya. Screenplay by Robert Pulcini, Jonathan Ames and Shari Springer Berman, directed by Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman. Rated “R”

By PATRICK McDONALD
Senior Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
pat@hollywoodchicago.com

Star Power Can’t Save ‘Mad Money’ From ‘Thelma & Louise’ Writer Callie Khouri

HollywoodChicago.com — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 14:56:00 -0500

CHICAGO – Whenever there’s stunt-movie casting with divergent generations of Hollywood “stars,” there’s bound to be trouble at the multiplex. This time, the “old to young” range of Diane “Annie Hall” Keaton, Queen Latifah and the increasingly annoying Katie Holmes attempt a stab at the classic heist movie in “Mad Money”.

Keaton portrays Bridget Cardigan: an upper-middle class matron whose husband (Ted Danson) has been laid off for a year and has given up trying to find another gig. Overwhelmed by debt and bills, Keaton goes back out into the work force. In an “it only can happen in the movies” turn of events, the best job she can find is as a janitor at the Federal Reserve bank (I guess all the administration jobs at the real estate offices were full).

Ted Danson in “Mad Money”.
Photo credit: IMDb

As she gets into her new career – strangely doing the cleaning work during the day shift – she notices there are some flaws in the airtight security involving the shredding of old currency.

Enlisting the aid of the shredding machinist (Latifah) and a currency transport clerk (Holmes), Keaton pulls off the successful pilfering of the old, untraceable cash and starts living large naturally to the tune of “Money (That’s What I Want)”.

The film begins promisingly as the perpetrators are being interviewed presumably after the gig is up (the film is told in flashback). The perspective on the crime is much more interesting than the crime and its subsequent backlash.

Director Callie Khouri (who most famously wrote “Thelma & Louise”) almost seems to be making two films: a statement about the lower-middle class struggle (especially for women) in connection with the American dream and a mishmash star vehicle. Each end of this spectrum bogs down the other.

Katie Holmes in “Mad Money”.
Photo credit: IMDb

The stars themselves have trouble with the material. Holmes – for all her riffing on the flighty, living in a trailer white trash – in real life could have gotten a job as a model especially with her $300 hairdo.

Keaton seemed ill at ease and totally bogus as a janitor despite the plot point that got her there.

Latifah is closest to the look and essence of a single mother in a housing project. Still, her saintly turn of “I’m doing it for my boys” justification is pandering at best.

That type of motivation was another problem with the film. The reluctance to expose naked human greed meant that all the characters were given convenient excuses for their stealing. Keaton wants to clear her debts, Latifah wants her kids to get into the right schools, a security guard has a sick mother, etc. Even the dim bulb husband of Holmes kept his job at a meat-packing plant.

It was the ending that really brought the proceedings to a deadly halt. Again, there were some interesting turns as the caper unravels, but unfortunately the filmmakers or the studio decided that there can be no unhappy endings with this star power. It does a severe disservice to logic.

You can give this to the birds and bees.

“Mad Money” opened on Jan. 18, 2008.

Click here for our full “Mad Money” image gallery!

By PATRICK McDONALD
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
pat@hollywoodchicago.com